We are on the road but not riding our sweet new Diverge touring bikes that we spent months selecting, fitting, fine-tuning & riding to train.  We arrived in St Petersburg tired but happy and our duffel bags appeared quickly on the carousel.  We then headed over to pick up our bike boxes but after waiting an hour, we realized something must be amiss.

 

Little did we know what a saga it would be to try to get our bikes.  After yet another hour of filling out customs and lost baggage claims (of course filled out as B. Smith), we headed to the hotel confident that they would appear the next day.  Six days later, we still do not have our bikes.  Many calls, endless minutes on hold, being directed to call yet another number (at least 12 numbers before I lost count) or back to the last number again (“no, they can help you at …..”), countless times of checking the lost baggage website (“still searching, check back later”) and still our bikes have yet to appear.  As best we can tell, they didn’t get on the flight from Seattle, went to Chicago, changed airlines more than once, traveled to London, were separated, and now we hear that one is in the St Petersburg airport and the other is still in London.  Since the customs paperwork said two bike boxes, they won’t release just one and are waiting for the other to make it to St Petersburg.  The problem is that our Russian visas expire tomorrow and we are leaving Russia.  We have asked that the bikes do not go through Russian customs and be sent on to Tallinn, Estonia the next city we travel through that has an airport….Hah!  We shall see where they travel to next.  If they go through customs and officially arrive in Russia, I am quite certain they will never be able to leave!!

So we have purchased German mountain bikes from a Russian bike shop.  The bikes we are riding are actually quite nice thanks in large measure to Peter our extraordinary bike mechanic from Slovakia who helped us select and modify them and Ivan, the manager from Alienbikes in St. Petersburg.  Despite a somewhat rocky start, Ivan was amazingly helpful…going to other stores to get parts we needed, driving us with our bikes in his personal car to get back to our hotel.  His wife even came to meet us and brought us gifts.

We started riding on Sunday on a beautiful sunny, hot day

 

 

Before the ride began, Jim and I did have some time when not fussing about  our bikes to see St Petersburg.  Beautiful city.  Highlights included a walking tour with Andrey, our Russian guide, visiting the Faberge museum (built by an oligarch trying to convince the powers that be that he is a good guy)

, and a night at the Marinsky theatre to see Russian ballet

 

Today’s ride was rain, headwinds, & much colder.  But, tomorrow is another day and who knows, maybe we will eventually be reunited with our bikes.  We enjoyed some things about Russia, but can’t say we are terribly sad to go.

Dasvadanya!!